Rough Start to a New World

"I can't believe I actually did it!"

I probably looked like a complete fanatic to these people, but I couldn't care less. This was almost assuredly another world, just like those stories that I was familiar with. I was still completely baffled at how this could become a reality in real life, but that could wait. Right now, I had to celebrate my escape from my previous trash life.

Nobody seemed to really know what they should do in this situation and instead opted to just look at me as if I were some sort of freak show. This eventually wore on me just a little, so I decided to put an end to the awkwardness.

Yet, when I opened my mouth to speak, instead I spit out some blood and the tooth that I knocked loose earlier.

"Shit, I lost a tooth!"

It looks like I only increased the awkwardness.

Despite me now panicking and touching my mouth and body to see if anything else was wrong, a man in robes stepped up. The knights parted ways just enough for him to get by, but they still pointed their spears at us.

"I see that the summoning this time was a success. Welcome. I'm sure you all are very confused about what is happening right now, but it is my hope that you will slowly come to terms with this situation and perhaps help us out in our time of need."

Please, does it even look like we are confused? I turned to see what the group of students looked like only to see panic and heavy expressions. Well, I guess it would be pretty normal to be confused in this situation.

With a sigh, I decided to sit down while the man explained everything to them. However, everybody seemed to be ignoring me at this point.

One of the men from the group of students stepped forward to speak.

"I don't understand, where are we? How could we suddenly get here? What was that blinding light just now? And what do you mean by help you?"

I let out a whistle at the student's barrage of questions, but it might have come out pretty weird – what with missing a tooth and all. But I was surprised to see that everybody seemed to be glaring at me.

I threw up my arms to show that I meant no harm.

"I just thought it was stupid to ask so many questions at once."

No, wait a second. Did I just say that out loud? The glares directed at me seemed to intensify.

"No, it is quite all right. Anybody would be overwhelmed and would want all their concerns addressed in this situation. Well, almost everyone I suppose."

The man in robes gave me a meaningful look, but then faced the students as he gave his explanation.

"As I mentioned earlier, you all were summoned to this world. I know not what kind of world you came from previously, but it is highly likely that this world works by different rules. For example, take a look at this."

With that he extended his arm and from his upturned palm a spark of fire manifested itself. Seeing that, my previous excitement came back in full force. Yes, this was truly a world of magic!

"As you can see, this world allows its people the ability to use something called mana to create phenomenon that simply wouldn't be possible otherwise. This idea is what allowed our finest wizards to create a summoning circle with the purpose of finding a strong individual to lead our country to greatness. It was our intent to only summon one such person, but it seems that the rest of you must have been in close proximity to each other before the summoning was complete. And thus, you all stand here now."

I nodded my head at this. Truly it was a miracle that I was able to tag along with this summoning ritual.

"Well, that makes since why we are all here, but why the hell is that old man here too?"

One of the women in the group said this while jerking a finger towards my direction.

"Ouch, glad to spot the sassy one early though."

"Shut the fuck up!"

She seemed to be pretty angry at that one, but I just rolled my eyes and directed my attention back towards the man in robes.

He cleared his throat and continued on with the explanation.

"Well, the principle would be the same in that man's case. He had to have been in close enough proximity to be summoned with our initial target."

I gave a smug look to those words, but nobody seemed to share that sentiment.

"Anyways, to continue with the explanation you all are now located in the royal castle of the Aros Kingdom. We have attempted this summoning so that we could find an extraordinary individual that could help our kingdom with the problems now plaguing it. One of you should be this individual we are talking about."

Everybody looked at each other to try and figure out which person the man was talking about. No one seemed to be sure, but they all seemed to only take one look at me before shaking their heads. I mean yeah it should be pretty obvious that I was a tag along, but you don't need to look so disappointed about it.

I crossed my arm with a frown and waited for more explanation.

"I'm sure you all have quite a bit more questions, but for now just know that there is currently no known way to reverse summon people. Furthermore, your only real course of action is to come into service of the Aros Kingdom."

Everybody started looking very uneasy now, but for me, that about summed up what kind of trope this summoning situation was bound to follow. Although I'm sure the situation would prove to be much more complex and unpredictable at least for now I knew what kind of start to expect.

First off, the kingdom that we were summoned to is facing difficult problems which probably means either war with a different kingdom or some sort of external threat such as demons.

Second, they have no problem showing their current power over our situation and likely are not all that friendly towards us. We were to either become their weapons or die before becoming a threat.

Lastly, they seem to be looking for someone with incredible latent potential, but they can't determine which of us that is supposed to be. Well, they might be able to rule me out based off of our interactions so far. So that means I should either play the role of a willing servant or a hopelessly incompetent person if I want to make it out of this situation alive. Anything else, including half-measures will likely land me in the spot of being too much of a threat to keep alive. Especially since it's pretty obvious that I mean absolutely nothing to the rest of the group.

Both of those options come with their own risks, but only one could give me a potentially good ending to this ordeal. Well, I guess it's time to start acting.

Everybody seemed to still be coming to terms with the situation, but that was my time to act.

"Hey so, can you guys like heal my tooth? I don't really have any money on me, but this will get in the way of me eating. You want me to try your delicious cuisine, right?"

I held up the tooth that fell out of my mouth for everyone to see.

The robed man frowned while shaking his head.

"No, you are not here to taste our 'cuisine'. You are here to become warriors in our army. If you go willingly, you will be treated with respect in correspondence with your abilities. If not, well we have many means of persuasion."

I felt like I drew out some of the real character of that man, but now was not the time to be scared by his words and fall into submission. That would be a sign that I was even remotely useful after all.

"You're not even going to feed us? How else are we going to learn how to do that fireball thing that you did earlier? Are you saying we need to get a separate job on top of that?"

Good, I'll just take the first sentence that he says and ignore the rest while talking about what I want to talk about. And judging be the deepening frowns of everybody in the room, including the students, I'm sure everybody is thinking I'm that kind of useless guy. Probably.

The robed man seemed to be gritting his teeth as he continued.

"No, I said nothing about 'that fireball thing'. You all are here to be soldiers. Now, we have been delayed long enough. I will now take you all to the training quarters where we can test which natural affinities you might have."

"No wait, excuse me. What do you mean no fireball training? Wasn't that your goal from the demonstration earlier?"

The robed man didn't even try to answer my new questions and instead just turned to one of the knights.

"I'm done dealing with this one, just knock him out."

Wait a second. My heart dropped as the knight saluted and approached me. Before I could even react, the butt-end of the knight's spear approached my head. With a thud, my consciousness quickly faded all while thinking that maybe my acting skills weren't that good after all.